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The Importance of Flexibility in Setting Outbound Targets

Every call centre manager knows the motivational power of targets for outbound agents. However, setting effective targets is a difficult and often frustrating art form.

Your hosted dialler can help you maximise the number of calls agents make per hour, but that’s just one of the many factors that can affect performance. From your data to your line of business, targets that seem practical in theory can be impossible to achieve in reality – and drain all enthusiasm and motivation from your agents.

To help, here’s a short guide to the variables that could be affecting performance and, as a result, should be having an effect on your targets and KPIs.

What affects call centre performance?

Even if you assume that every agent performs to the same standard in every single shift, campaign results aren’t always in their hands alone.

Performance can be affected by a huge variety of factors including:

1. Your list

Data is the lifeblood of every campaign – and a bad list can turn an entire shift into a series of no-answers and wrong numbers. As you set targets, you should always be considering the quality of your data. If none of your agents is hitting the numbers you expect, this could be the sign of a bigger issue with the numbers they are calling.

Your dialler will help you see how lists are performing, so you can quickly evaluate data and spot the signs of a bad list.

2. Your calls

Finally, it’s important to consider the specificities of your industry and the nature of the calls you are making. For example, a charity campaign to highly-qualified prospects is likely to create more successful outcomes than a cold-call campaign for double glazing.

Your dialler should let you dig into detailed information on your average conversion rates, call lengths, and more. It’s crucial that your targets are based on this first-hand insight, not industry-wide averages that simply may not apply to you.

3. Your technology

Whether you’re using a hosted dialler or not, technology plays an important role in agent performance. Without a dialler, agents may be held back by time-consuming tasks like finding and inputting numbers. With the wrong dialler, they may be waiting to be connected to calls or struggling with a confusing interface. Even with the best dialler, a bad configuration could be a serious obstacle to utilising your agents efficiently.

The right service provider will be able to help you by:

Suggesting opportunities where automation could save agents time

Assisting with dialler configuration to improve talk time

Customising your dialler interface to suit your agents

Set targets flexibly with real-time insight

If agents are consistently missing your targets, it may be tempting to think that the targets themselves are wrong. However, it’s important to remember that they are only wrong at this moment in time.

In practice, a call centre moves so quickly that what is achievable in one shift becomes impossible in the next. With that in mind, the best targets are realistic and achievable because they’re based on what’s happening right now, not what has happened before.

As you plan for agent performance targets and KPIs, your hosted dialler should give you real-time access to data and reports, not just archived information. With real-time visibility, you can quickly tailor targets to the challenges your agents are facing in the moment, giving them a goal that’s in-reach, even as things change.